[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 41 (Tuesday, April 4, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H1427-H1428]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           IMMIGRATION REFORM

  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to assume the time 
of the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham).
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Tennessee?
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, people sometimes resort to scurrilous 
personal abuse or childish sarcasm when their case is weak. Let me 
repeat: people sometimes resort to scurrilous personal abuse or 
childish sarcasm when their case is weak.
  For instance, on foreign policy, you know instantly when someone uses 
the word ``isolationist,'' they are resorting to name calling, rather 
than a serious discussion on the merits or the lack thereof.
  On the issue of immigration, the scurrilous, personal abuse is when 
people imply or say that someone is a racist or a bigot if they want 
our immigration laws enforced.

[[Page H1428]]

  The childish sarcasm is when a columnist or someone else says we 
would have to line up 200,000 buses to remove 12 million immigrants.
  No one thinks you can enforce all our immigration laws overnight or 
instantly solve this problem, but just because we cannot solve this 
problem all at once does not mean we should just give up and open up 
our borders.
  Our government estimated several years ago that half the people of 
the world would come here very quickly if allowed to do so. Our 
schools, hospitals, roads, jails, sewers, our entire infrastructure 
simply could not handle such a rapid, massive influx of people.
  A couple of years ago, Newsweek magazine said half the people of the 
world have to get by on $2 or less a day. Consistent with this was a 
column I read a few months later that said half the people in the world 
do not even have a second pair of shoes.
  We are blessed beyond belief to live in this country. We all have 
great sympathy for those who have to live under difficult circumstances 
in other countries.
  God has blessed every nation with natural beauty and/or natural 
sources that can make those countries rich. However, in most countries, 
people have fallen for the myth that government could solve all 
problems, and they have voted in liberal or left-wing governments or 
they have had dictators who forced big governments on them, and the 
economies have been ruined.
  You cannot blame so many people for wanting to come here, and we all 
admire the work ethic of many who come here from other countries; but 
we cannot take in half the people of the world, especially in a short 
time. We have to have a legal, orderly system of immigration, and it 
has to be enforced.
  Rush Limbaugh said a few months ago that if you do not have borders, 
you do not have a country.
  Thomas Sowell, writing about this a few days ago, said, ``We could 
solve the problem of all illegal activity anywhere by legalizing it. 
Why use this approach only with immigration? Why should any of us pay a 
speeding ticket if immigration scofflaws are legalized after the fact 
for committing a Federal crime?
  ``Most of the arguments for not enforcing our immigration laws are 
exercises in frivolous rhetoric and slippery sophistry, rather than 
serious arguments that will stand up under scrutiny.''
  Mr. Sowell continues, ``How often have we heard that illegal 
immigrants `take jobs that Americans will not do'? What is missing in 
this argument is what is crucial in any economic argument: price.
  ``Americans will not take many jobs at their current pay levels, and 
those pay levels will not rise so long as poverty-stricken immigrants 
are willing to take those jobs.''
  And he went on in this column to say, ``The old inevitability ploy is 
often trotted out in immigration debates: it is not possible to either 
keep out illegal immigrants or to expel the ones already here.
  ``If you mean stopping every single illegal immigrant from getting in 
or expelling every single illegal immigrant who is already here, that 
may well be true.''
  Mr. Sowell said, ``But does the fact that we cannot prevent every 
single murder cause us to stop enforcing the laws against murder?''
  Mr. Speaker, with the Simpson-Mazzoli Act 20 years ago, we tried the 
same type of law that some who want to be soft on immigration are 
advocating today, but that law led to a quadrupling of illegal 
immigrants. We simply cannot afford to let that happen again.
  President Theodore Roosevelt said many years ago, in fact in 1919, 
``In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes 
here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, 
he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is 
an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or 
birthplace, or origin.''

                              {time}  2030

  But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an 
American and nothing but an American.
  And Theodore Roosevelt continued. He said, ``There can be no divided 
allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American but something else 
also isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the 
American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all 
wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any 
foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile.''
  And Theodore Roosevelt concluded this statement by saying, ``We have 
room for but one language here, and that is the English language. And 
we have room but for one sole loyalty, and that is the loyalty to the 
American people.''
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would say that if people want the rights, 
privileges, and opportunities of American citizens, they should wave 
the American flag. If they want to be Mexicans and wave the Mexican 
flag, and there is nothing wrong with that, but they should go home to 
Mexico to do that.

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